February 11th

Reading Revelation

To my dear TFMC family,

Currently, the book “The Water Hole” by Graeme Base is very popular in our house.  It’s both a counting book and a search-and-find book.  The latter is the most interesting part.  Within each illustration on each page are additional animals to be found.  But they’re not obvious.  Sometimes it’s the negative space, or the crease of a leaf, or a carefully drawn branch that creates the shape of a creature. Chloe loves it, and truth be told, I rather enjoy the search too.

There’s something about finding hidden things that brings with it a thrill.  The book of Revelation has, for some folk, served to be a sort of ‘search and find’ book.  There has been no shortage of people claiming to have finally decoded the meaning of Revelation and determined the end of days to occur on a very specific day at a very specific time.  History has shown us that these folks could have spent their time on other pursuits.

The question that my colleagues and I wrestled with at CMU was, “How do we responsibly preach the book of Revelation?”  And much of our time was spent pondering how one reads Revelation, before we consider preaching it.  Very quickly we pushed aside the predictive method of reading Revelation, and soon we started leaning into the more artistic side of it.  

With all the sounds, symbols and images evoked within its chapters, we were challenged to consider how we might read it as imaginative art?  Revelation is a book that speaks to our senses.  There’s vivid imagery, colour, and there are sounds described.  No wonder so much artwork, good, bad, and otherwise, has been generated from the words of Revelation.

We were also challenged to consider whether we could imagine Revelation as a political cartoon.  With hyperbole, embellishment, and exaggeration being present, could the wordsmith John be using Revelation as a commentary?  Perhaps this was John’s way of inviting us into his world?

This time in Winnipeg has all led me to wonder and begin dreaming about a sermon, or even a study series, about Just Revelation.  Could we read Revelation from a justice perspective?  If it is a political cartoon, then how might we read it as a commentary on John’s setting?  This would lead us, then, to ask the question, how might that commentary translate to our setting?  Rather than commenting on some future event, how does it speak to us now and today?  How might we be participants in the vision of Revelation, rather than passive observers to a cosmic catastrophe?

All these thoughts are trying to figure out how we might read Revelation again, and perhaps release ourselves from some of the baggage it carries.  There were many folk who were hesitant to open up this book because of how much it’s been misused.  And for me, that signals that it’s high time to read it again, to try and redeem it.  

Yours,

Craig Janzen Neufeld, Pastor